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College football player kicked off team after kissing boyfriend

College freshman Jamie Kuntz outed himself over the Labor Day weekend during a game between his team, North Dakota State College of Science, and Snow College in Pueblo, Colorado.

Kuntz, 18, was sitting the game out because of a concussion and instead was helping to film the game from the press box. Sitting next to him was his 65-year-old boyfriend. At one point during the game, Kuntz leaned over and gave his boyfriend a brief kiss which was witnessed by some of his teammates.

The teenager was confronted on the bus ride home by head coach Chuck Parsons and he lied saying the man he kissed with his grandfather. A few days later, Kuntz was kicked off of the team, according to columnist Dan Savage.

‘He said he didn’t care what people did in their personal lives, but it was a big mistake to do that on a football trip,’ Kuntz tells Savage. ‘I said, yeah, I made a big mistake and I apologized again for lying. Then he handed me a letter and said he was kicking me off the team because what I did was ‘detrimental’ to the team and I was a ‘distraction.”

The coach wrote that Kuntz was being kicked off the team ‘solely on the basis of your conduct during the football game’ and for lying about it, an action some sports journalists interviewed by Savage see as an effort to not be accused of homophobia.

Kuntz, who says he has always been attracted to older men, has dropped out of school and is living with his mother. She found out her son is gay when Kuntz changed the bio on his Twitter account from ‘football player’ to ‘gay football player.’